Curative
By Kaimaler
Same as before. Review replies are posted at the bottom of the page. ;)
I've decided to make the Governor a bit more like the comics. He was way nastier in the comics, his brutality to get what he wanted was pretty sick. He wasn't like "Terminus" or "Negan" sick, but he was fucked in the head. He was okay with torture and vile acts committed against anyone he didn't like or approve of. In the comics the Governor was absolutely vile behind closed doors and was a model leader when in the public eye.
Like when he raped Michonne than told Rick in the infirmary that he did. It was sinister and sick. So I'm going to continue that kinda behavior.
Because we don't watch "The Walking Dead" for the fluff! We watch it for the action and watching our heroes struggle with shit! :D
This is going to be a "Transition" chapter. Reading about what the Governor does for fun forever isn't interesting. But it is important to why Laura becomes what she, well, becomes. A lot happens, but not a lot that requires detailing.
So sit back and enjoy harsh, vengeful torture.
That's literally all this chapter is. I'm taking Laura's deepest fears and tossing her through the meat grinder and we'll just have to see what path she chooses. Will she be stronger? Broken? She was fairly weak while she traveled with Red and Rick's group. It's time to nut up or shut up.
The mixed metal walls, trickling light, and clear floor made up the room she had been stuck in. There was not much to focus on in the room thought she did try to find something else to think about during her long days.
Hours turned to days and days to weeks. She lost count of how many nights she had been kept in here. She did often think about her friends, people she would have considered family if given the chance. Rick, Lori, and Carl were a family she wanted to be a part of. She did not know what part, if she would be a sister, a daughter, or just someone they knew.
Laura knew, in the dark recesses of her mind, that Rick cared deeply for her. He developed an immediate attachment to her after she outed herself to him privately that day in the quarry camp. He saw her as a scared girl, alone in a world of monsters that were made up of both the living and the dead. Rick read her easily, she was not a complicated sort, and he saw how frightened she was of them and of being alone.
It was her only option, either to be with them and be terrified everyday or be alone with the undead. Though Laura was a quiet person who wanted a simple life but was given the most complicated hand that could possibly be dealt. Rick understood that and he tried his best too look out for everyone and kept an eye on the complicated undead woman. He always considered her a friend, someone to talk to, someone to confide in.
He knew that she desperately wanted someone to trust her as much as she placed her trust, her life in their hands. Rick had been frustrated with the others, how he saw a few of them leave when she approached. Of course he never told her he saw when they avoided her, when they shunned her. It would only hurt her more. Instead he extended his hand and his trust to her, talking to her about private matters that helped her feel a part of the group. She supported him and often gave him something to think about and he supported her by being close and reliable.
She liked it, she liked Rick, and most of all she loved feeling like her opinions meant something to someone. The others did not include her and often did not check on her like they did each other. In some dark place in her head she knew they cared for her, she knew Glenn, T-Dog, and Dale certainly did. When she first arrived she knew Shane was happy to see her, only that opinion changed.
Now the only people that sought out Laura's well being was Rick and Daryl. Lori seemed indifferent the same as Andrea did, they would be friendly to her but not friends with her. Laura wished Jacqui was around, she made her feel so calm. It was only her personality, how she spoke, but Laura felt happy with Jacqui. She did not like to think about the kindly woman who chose to end her life. Just as she refused to think about her father and mother.
In this room alone, half naked, and in significant pain she figured it was now or never. These people beat her almost daily, rarely giving her time to rest between, and it did not take long for the beatings to worsen. At first when they took her they tried to get information out of her, if she was with a group, where they were, how many weapons they had. Laura told them she was alone and all she had was the clothes on her back and a bit of food they found in the house.
It was easy to tell she was lying. They had searched the house top to bottom and found signs of multiple residents. Recently used clothes the wrong sizes for Laura, dust rings in the pantry where food had been just recently, and all the beds in the house had been used. It was unlikely this was all one person so they continued their questioning.
They would enter the room, one or two guards flanked the man in charge the same one who stepped out of the car that night. He was taller than her with short dark brown hair and a nonchalant expression when they beat tortured her. He did not care who she was or why she was there, only what information she could give them. These people were merciless and Laura would not give up Carol and the others regardless of their persuasive methods.
Her appearance threw them off at first and the questioning did include this unnatural look in her eye. Insisting she tell them why her eyes looked dead, why her skin was tinted blue, and why they never heard her choking on her own blood when anyone else would be. They knew what happened when people were beaten, when they suffered internal bleeding. She should be coughing, choking, or have trouble breathing. Instead she only made noise during the beating, barely anything after.
Suspicions were raised, but no more than usual. Believing she was just incredibly resilient, they increased the severity and frequency of the torture. They went so far as to drive a knife through her hand, listen to her scream, and demand answers. When she kept her mouth shut it only served to piss them off.
Eventually the beatings became direct torture, more deliberate attempts to torture a prisoner. Some who did not have the stomach for it would not be in the room, those who could did all the work. He would come in, sit in the chair on the opposite side of the room, and they would do what they had to do. She was tied to the chair, they drove nails through her hands and wrists into the arms of the chair. They would wrap her wrists and ankles in barbed wire, pull a molar from her jaw, and brought in a car battery.
She could not tell which practice they used was worse. While she was tough, her condition made her so, the torture grew more and more unbearable. Laura knew the others were far enough away, they would not be able to find them anymore. Not unless they had found their tracks the night they attacked. Judging by their questioning her they never did.
It took some time, but she began to pass out during the torture unable to cope with it any longer. Her senses felt like fire, the room would shake like an earthquake in her mind. Communicating anything was impossible during this time and so the torture came to a slow stop.
After that they left her alone for some time, only stopping in to drop a plate of food in the room. They had released her restraints and allowed her to move around the room. It did not much matter, she was far too weak to fight and the pain that racked her body tossed out any ideas of attacking them. She had no fight left in her, she was thoroughly beaten.
Now she sat in this room with hollow metal walls and only a small sliver of light. They clicked on the light in the room when they entered, but did not much care to leave it on anymore. Laura tried to spy out the cracks in the walls, escape even, but they were either welded down or patched together. She was trapped and she could not get out.
Laura leaned against the wall, refusing to use the chair she was tortured in or the chair he sat in when he watched her be tortured. There was no comfort to be had while she wasted away. He would eventually kill her, get rid of her body, and get on with his life. She could not stop him and she considered long and hard if she wanted to. Death was preferable to more of this.
Wounds had healed over into scars all along her body, she looked at them and felt a phantom pain. Her time spent in this room was brutal, worse than what she had had before, and was only getting worse. Now that she was no longer required for questioning, they only came to give her food or torment her. On a particular night things progressed beyond the usual beating.
When he entered the room she was ready for another round. Over weeks and weeks she had become accustomed to the odd assaults they carried out. Either to get something out of her or just because they wanted to beat someone, she knew that fighting them made it worse and she had to wait for her chance. He closed the door behind him, stepped into the room and dragged her off her feet.
She was confused for a moment before he threw her down and forced her face into the floor. When she heard him above her she knew her captors had found more uses for her than just someone to beat when they were pissed off. He took her on the cold concrete floor, her body still aching, and she felt like the world had given her the worst luck. She came to them to not be alone, to get away from the people who would do her harm. Now she felt her body grinding into the floor, her hands trying to brace herself to stop the stone from scraping her.
It was not the last of her long nights in the dark metal room. His assault on her found footing with others and it began a chain of attacks on her person that left her shattered.
Laura sat on the floor, only an over sized shirt to comfort her. They took away everything from her clothes, her weapons, to her pride and dignity. She felt like a caged animal living in detestable conditions so long she no longer thought about how to escape or evade them. She came to accept her fate even though it was not the one she had been ready for.
She believed they would have shot her that night, killed her without a second thought. They made more ideas in mind and she was not ready for them. When she was being tortured in that chair, beaten while he watched, or taken by force against the cold metal walls; she knew there were worse things than death. Having every part of her self ruined, everything she once thought good about herself all destroyed over months of their actions against her.
Resistance was not an option for her, there was nothing to fight back with, no way to escape, and no one knew where she was. Laura receded into her own mind, a kind of disconnect between herself and her body tore her away from the everyday torture. She escaped into her thoughts about her life, her family, friends, and the rest of the group.
Laura hoped they were alright, that they all made it off the farm. She knew Rick, Carl, and Hershel made it as she watched them drive away. Months had passed since she last saw them and she had no idea if they were still surviving out there. They could be in another state by now or turned and went back to Atlanta. She could not imagine why they would, but anything was possible now.
Carol had made it out with the others. Red's group took her to safety and that safety did not include Laura. There was no debate about it, Laura's mind was struggling against the virus. When she woke up from her undead state she regained herself over time and found that whatever part in her mind that the infection had reanimated was still there.
Jenner told her the cure her father had used on her was not a cure but a modified version of the infection that reanimated the entire brain, not just the stem. It used the virus already there to build off of and bring her back. In a curious way she cheated death, but the result was not as good as being alive. Rick got that, he knew he did not need to ask about it.
If Laura had the chance to stop her father from bringing her back, she would have. Now she remained in a locked struggle with a part of her brain that was still infected. It was alive, aware, and a part of her. The Voice was Laura's own, it spoke to her the way she expected a mother to talk to her, but it was twisted. She used it while on the outside surviving, the Voice was no longer a controlling infection but it wanted her to take the steps she took.
So far the two were in agreement, survival above all. Laura wanted to stay alive to deliver Carol and she did that because she knew, no matter how hard she fought it, Laura was not safe to be around. Those people would have searched the entire area for them, they were inside and outside the walls. Had Laura escaped with the group they would all be in danger of her undead urges and the attackers would still be looking for their trail.
As far as options go Laura knew she had to choose the lesser of two evils. Go with the others, escape, and risk capture anyways or hurting someone. Or keep the attackers busy, fight them, use whatever part of her head that wanted to hurt someone and let it go on them. She was vastly outmanned and outgunned, she was beaten within minutes. Every second was distance between Carol and these people.
In here though, thinking about her life and what it all lead up to, Laura felt empty and useless. She tried her best to help the others, use what ability she could to benefit the group. Yet here they ended up with the farm overran with walkers, everyone split up, not knowing who survived and who did not. Here she sat on a hard concrete floor, restless, in pain, and finding herself agreeing with the part of her mind that told her humans were her enemy.
Laura held no illusions about her condition, she did not categorize herself as part of the group in the same way Glenn was or Andrea. Laura was different, alien, a creature to them and to herself. There was nothing human about her anymore, she had left that part of her life behind. She feared it was a kind of denial that lead her to believe he was one of them and now she entered acceptance, realizing her position in this world.
She is undead and the walkers were more kin to her than these humans surrounding her. They treated her like an animal, beating her when they were angry, fucking her when they pleased. They did not consider her the same as them, holding her lower than dirt. She accepted this and bowed her head, unable to find any willingness in herself to fight anymore.
The undead were the cause of the end of the world as it was. Monsters tore apart homes and families, ruining the once sparkling civilization that stood. Laura kept her head down, the abuse continued, and she could muster no strength in her body to resist the Voice in her head anymore.
He came alone a lot more now, no guards stepping inside to help him with his so far fruitless attempts. She began to heal, the nails and barbed wire in her skin scarring over. She hated the feeling, but there was nothing she could do about it. He wanted her to suffer so suffer she did, he wanted her to scream so scream she did. Hopeless and alone, Laura felt ready for the end. They would dispose of her eventually now that they had done what they could to get her to talk.
But the man was not so easily defeated. He wanted to prolong the torture, to drag it out and keep her alive as long as he could. No matter her resolve she would break, it was impossible to resist torture for so long without rest. She did what she could, but it was too much.
The day came that she talked. Laura's body tried to heal the damage done, it was driving her mad, she felt dead already. Her mind was going and she wanted to go out with some semblance of dignity. Both had been violently taken from her through consistent beatings, torture, and rapes. It was far too much for one already shattered mind to suffer through, she failed to function anymore and remained entirely docile.
"If you tell me what I want, this all will be over." He spoke, that low rocky voice. It grated her hearing, she hated listening to him speak. He didn't know it, but when he spoke to her he fueled a fire in her chest that only drove her to spite him more. "You must know I don't want to do this, they don't want to do this. We're only protecting our own people. We have homes, families here that rely on us to keep them safe." She would have scoffed at him were she so inclined. He said this a hundred times a hundred different ways.
She did not care what he said, no one who did not enjoy torturing someone else would do this actively. Not just to protect others. She did want it to be over, to escape either this room or her life entirely. Laura could not find it in herself to recall her life before the outbreak, it was muddled and mixed with all sorts of memories that were pieced together incorrectly. She stopped trying, but she knew before the infection was widespread she did live alone for a short time and she remembered that feeling.
The feeling of being at home and at peace. Entering her apartment, whatever it looked like, and sitting on her couch. There was a memory that appeared to be scratched into her head of sitting on her couch, the bay window beside her, and a dog on her lap. It was not her apartment and yet she felt perfectly content being there. Her throat tightened and she realized how good she used to have it, if even for only that one moment.
It was better than this.
"I know there were others living in that house with you. My people searched the yard and found that two of the bars out back were loose..." He raised a glass of some unknown alcohol to his lips. She could smell it the moment he entered the room. She hated that smell. "Pretty smart. By the time we noticed those bars were broken the others were long gone I bet."
Laura certainly hoped so. If they only found it after the firefight, after they took her to this forsaken room than she knew it was too late for them to find a trail. The rain and age of the trail would have long since washed away any trace they were there. A small flash of a memory came into her mind's eye, one of Rick smiling at her telling her it was alright. It was alright she didn't know something.
What was it? Laura frowned, I can't remember...
He leaned forward from his relaxed posture in the chair across from her. It was clear to him this was another day of silence from her, but she was close to talking. A person could only hold out for so long before there was nothing they could do to remain quiet. The man nodded to another behind her and she felt his hand on her neck, pushing her forward in the chair.
She was bent over and he took both hands to tear the shirt she was wearing down the back. Remaining still, she allowed them to keep her chest down against her lap, moving her long black hair out of the way. There was a hissing sound and she was momentarily curious what had made that. The quiet lasted only a second before the man was poised behind her.
First she felt heat, than she felt a searing pain bloom from her back. It spread like fire, hissing as the heat scorched into her skin. "AAAAHHH!"She screamed, her body trying to trash from the other man's grip. She was held down by another man in front of her, the hot iron pressed harder into the skin on her back. Hot tears streamed down her face and screamed until her voice began to give out. The only sounds she made now were broken mewls from a ruined voice, her body felt like it had been torn apart from her spine to her chest.
"Tell me where your group is!" He demanded through her cries, "How many and where did they go?!" He was beyond tired of dealing with her. It was now or he would keep branding her until she was nothing but a burnt corpse. She was still held down, the hot iron removed with another lined up. They were not through with her yet.
She tried to twitch, move her body, something to stop the burning pain from her back. The other man kept her down, pressing her shoulders down. His weight was far more than waned strength over the last month. She could not care what he said to her, the pain was too extreme and her attempt to quell it drowned out his threats.
It was not until the second iron was brought out that he leaned over her shoulder, his head just above her ear. "Tell me how many and where they went or we'll do it again." He flicked his fingers, gesturing the man to present the second iron to her. But all she heard in her head was screaming, her senses beyond overloaded with the burning pain. She had never been burnt, never touched a flame while in this condition and found it the most agonizing form of torture they had come up with so far. Her skin felt like thousands of hot needles piercing her skin all at once, she could not choose one thing to focus on. His voice? The men? The pain? Her mind flashed back and forth, unable to comprehend what he was saying to her.
He stood up and nodded, the second iron smaller than the last but just as hot. They leaned her up, the back of the chair pressing into the fresh burn with excruciating force that she choked another scratched scream from. Her body twitched and jumped on its own accord as the man pulled her hair back and held her against the chair with his other arm.
She remembered seeing the iron and trying to jump away from it again just before the brand seared into her collarbone. The thin skin over the bone made her feel like her bones were on fire inside of her. The heat burned a path through her neck, shoulder, and chest. She knew at some point she was screaming and another she was crying, but she could not tell what was happening anymore. Her mind flashed to a white nothingness as the branding iron was removed.
Her screams stopped and she felt wholly unable to cry anymore. They gave her a moment to calm down, for her awareness to return. It took a few minutes until the man released her and she fell partially forward in the chair. Her back and chest alight with a fiery pain she had not yet known. It was the worst pain she had ever felt and took the very last of her resolve with it.
"How many and where did they go." He spoke lowly, a kind of final try threat. She knew he had more in store for her and this was only bound to get worse. It had been long enough, she had only never told him to give the others enough time to slip through and to spite him. Beating her was nothing, violating her she had dealt with before, and even the more general attempts at torture were not enough.
Laura was alright, she felt like she had enough or that she had lasted long enough. Either way, she knew she could not go through that again. Had he given her another moment to breath from the first time, she would have buckled before the second. The branded marks on her body were there until her death now, so were the scars from her weeks of torture and she knew there would be plenty for her lifetime. It did not matter so much, she was about to be dead soon anyways.
She knew telling them meant they would search for the others and kill her regardless of if they found a trail or not. It was a power play, all about exercising control over another person. He won naturally, Laura knew she lasted longer than he expected her too and had he not given his men free reign to rape her she could see herself talking long ago. After the first man took her on the floor, Laura resisted his questions out of pure hatred.
He sighed, thinking that she had somehow managed to resist him again. The branding irons were heating up again and once he nodded to the man, she put her hand on the table beside her. Laura lifted her head and told him. "There... there were... eight." She struggled to speak, it reminded her of her days back in Atlanta when she stuttered. "I don-don't know... where-" She tried to swallow, "-they went. They just- they just ran."
He had a wide satisfied smile plastered on his face and doubted heavily she would lie to him. She had either denied them any answers or gave them what they wanted. He had broken this woman enough to get her to give up her friends just to stop the torture. In his own demented mind that proved enough for him; that he was capable of such a feat.
She surrendered to him entirely, there was nothing left of the woman who fought him at that old farm home in the woods.
So long had passed before Laura was approached by the man in charge again. He did not bother on coming down to the cell they held her in anymore, she had nothing he wanted. As he opened the door and his eyes found her frame in the corner cowering, knees pulled up to her chest, arms around them, and her head hanging; he made his approach cautiously.
He had complaints from the guards that she had begun to bite and claw them. She did not speak, she did not make a sound. He grinned, finding her completely and utterly broken hiding in the corner of the dark room. He flicked on the light and neared her smaller frame, she did not move though she was aware of his presence in the room.
As far as they were concerned this broken woman was long dead, only kept around for the entertainment of his men after she had killed too many of theirs. She had shot their friends, people they worked with for a long time before she showed up. They took their frustration and anger out on her and it was time to address it. Laura had been kept for too long and he sought to dispose of this stranger.
Though he would not have given it a second thought before having them take her out back the wall and toss her body to the biters, he had an itching question in the back of his head. While he worked to get information out of her he had ignored this question and went about prying what he wanted to know out of her by force. Of course she gave in over time, but it was too late for it to be useful. He might admit he did it because he enjoyed it, but he did not feel like going down that path just yet.
This question came about when his men told him she had attempted to bite and tear when they got too close to her head. The bite wounds on a few of the men would create deep scars, marking those men for as long as they had marked her. He found it fascinating that they had not fed her particularly often, her meals were irregular and they even compared her to a biter; saying when she attacked she looked like one.
Instead of killing her and tossing her body to the biters, he brought in a man to look her over and give him the answer to what had been bothering him for so long. She had been in this room for almost two months now, cowering away while they tossed her old food they were going to trash anyways. She ate what she could and did not complain about the quality, he believed she did not care about it as strange as that was.
Another man entered the room wearing a tucked in white shirt, freshly pressed. He was clean with a short well kept beard and peppered hair. She did not care who was in the room, she did not raise her eyes to see them. "It's alright, she doesn't have any fight left in her, Doctor. She's as harmless as a fly." The man brought the new stranger in, stepping away from her to pull the usual chair he used up. He took a seat and the room door was closed behind the well dressed newcomer.
He stood in the center of the room, a leather bag in hand, and looked over the barely recognizable person trying desperately to ignore them. He was not bothered by what they had done to her, why they did it; this was just what the world came to. The man in charge protected his own by force when he felt the need. The man, the doctor as he was addressed, set the leather bag on the small table against the wall.
She heard him moving and ignored him, too enraptured by her own thoughts and fears. She was no longer the person she was, but a mangy dog in a cage. It was a depressing reality around her and one she was forced to live with. Whatever their intentions she knew she was not one of them, not human, and she did not belong in their world. Lower than an animal, lower than dirt, she reminded herself. Her deepest fears had come to life and beat her into their reality.
To survive or at the very least stop the pain, she was what they wanted her to be.
The man rummaged through the bag on the table, the leader sat on the chair glancing between her and the doctor. He was curious why she looked the way she did, why she appeared so strange to everyone. Her eyes had made them the most uncomfortable, they preferred to blindfold her during her torture so they did not have to look at her. He knew conditions in the world existed to make people appear inhuman, diseases, disfigurement, something to explain why she was different.
It was a flight of fancy really, he would toss her away afterwards, but for now he wanted every question he had answered. For that he had a doctor with enough experience and knowledge off hand to tell him what he wanted to know.
The doctor knelt down beside her, his leather shoes squeaking as they wrinkled under his weight. He was instructed to look over the woman and find out what was causing her deformity. It was unlikely anything he found particularly interesting, yet there was that itch in his head. It told him that by chance there could be something there, some way she actually had a use to them.
He placed a hand on the back of her head, expecting the woman to lash out. She remained absolutely still, having been knocked down one too many times to care about resisting anymore. It made his job easier of course, so he was glad for that. When he had been asked to look over people brought in before they had a tendency to attack when touched.
"You said it was prevalent in the eyes, correct?" He asked having retrieved what he needed to examine her. The usual torturer sat in the chair, content with himself, and nodded to the doctor.
"Some strange discoloration. My men tell me she bites, so be careful." He sipped the iced drink in his hand. "They told me she tries to attack like a biter, gnawing at them if they get close to her face. She does it too, took a few good bites out of the guards." He explained what he knew, but did not detail why they were close enough to be bitten in the first place.
"And they haven't displayed the symptoms of a fever at all?" The doctor was cautious of course, trying to make sure he was not about to get himself bitten and turned by examining a prisoner. She did not behave like a biter in that she was sitting, curled in a corner. There was no shuffling, no hissing when they entered the room. If she was a biter she certainly had no signs.
"None at all, all perfectly healthy. She might just be crazed from being down here too long." It appeared to be the least of his concerned, "But I noticed something when we first plucked her from that farm house. There wasn't really much time to investigate, far too preoccupied with security for that. Now that she has given us what we wanted, I can't but be curious."
"About?" He asked, looking over the woman in front of him who hid her face in her arms. She did not appear to be anything more than average so far, but there was a strange tint over her skin.
"Why the hell does she look like a biter." He glowered at her, critical and disapproving of the woman that gave him so much trouble. She had been incredibly difficult to break and wasted much of his time trying to do so.
The doctor did not think much on it and went to finding out what the man meant. She was not moving away from him or even showing she acknowledged he was there. Unresponsive meant he had to do the work himself, making her move the way he wanted by forcing her. He pulled her head up by gripping the hair around the crown of her head, her face stained with trails of dried tears and dirt.
The small light in his hand he raised to her eyes and found an alarming mutation. One he recognized almost immediately, but he had to be sure. He took a part of the gauze bandages he set on the floor beside him and cleared the mess from her face, showing him he had guessed correctly. Lost work, lost time; he had it sitting in front of him.
"Bring the guards in, we need to take her to the lab." The doctor gathered his supplies and began to sort them back into his bag. He was beyond excited to see what he could do now that she was here. A million ideas began running through his head at once and he barely caught onto the man in charge questioning him as he stood from his chair.
"What did you find?" A quick change in mood told him there was something going on he did not understand.
"You have found my patient zero. She's the first successful test subject of my experiments." He spoke quickly, thrilled at this discovery. "If I can use her, keep her alive to find out what had brought her back I might be able to find a way to duplicate it for widespread use. Think about it, the whole of Woodbury with the power of resurrection." Though he explained it, there was not much the man in charge could make of it. All he knew was his man on staff wanted her and he would have her.
"We'll talk more in the lab about this." He directed at the doctor before heading to the door and retrieving the guard. He came into the room and nodded as the man gave him orders. It was not much to do just carry this already light weight woman into the lab out back, the one separated from the town just on the edge of the wall. It was a place to test and progress on his work.
She felt her body lifted by a stronger man and whisked away from the metal room that had been her personal hell for so long. It felt good to feel outside again, but she was disappointed it was night. Somehow she felt like the sun would feel more rejuvenating, but she was not so lucky.
Retreating into her own mind again, trying to escape what was happening around her, Laura did her best to ignore the others and listen to the Voice inside her. It was deep, more animalistic now. There was a predatory feeling building in her stomach that told her to hunt and eat, to fight and rend. She felt the hunger build up over weeks and did her best to control it.
With her will wiped from her there was nothing holding off that animal side of her, the brain stem that gets her up and moving as Jenner put it. She functioned on instinct with anything or anyone in her metal room.
If she had her mind together she would remember what Jenner said to the group about this infection, how the virus invades and reanimates the brain stem. All she could remember was eating and starving, as if nothing existed outside the fight to survive anymore. Her memories were a faded mess of seconds pieced together into one event that made no discernible sense. Whatever was happening inside her brain, however the virus was invading; it was mixing her memories, thoughts, and knowledge into an unintelligible mangle.
Words, stimulation; nothing exercised her ability to perform. Without the need to function her brain forgot how and the virus took root, removing whatever desire she had to remember. It was injury and trauma that had taken a hammer to an already fractured mind. She needed time to heal and was not going to be given it.
She was laid down in a room, some time had passed. It was confusing to see a bright light above her head and be resting on a comforted surface. It was not hard and cold like the floor, but rather soft and warm. She felt her body sinking into it like a real bed again and it made her paranoid. They tortured her, did terrible things to her, why were they giving her creature comforts now?
The light was too bright, she could not see passed it. Closing her eyes was the only respite from the blinding light though she was curious what the noise was around her. There were metal things hitting other metal things, drawers being opened, papers being shuffled. It was all very interested but she dared not press her luck with these people anymore.
Her body still burning in pain, her joints aching, and her stomach growling in a cannibalistic hunger. Nothing about this was relaxing, not even the warmth of the light or the smooth and pliable surface below her. It had the opposite effect, putting her immediately on edge.
She pursed her lips and frowned. Where am I?
adelphe24:
Yeah, this isn't going well for Laura. :)
But don't worry, there's a reason for all of this. To progress and evolve her as a person! Torture does wonders.